Heaven's Gate marked the end of personal filmmaking.

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And when I'm all alone I feel I don't wanna hide
I earnestly believe (as well as numerous others) that Heaven's Gate marked the end of personalised filmmaking in American cinema. The repercussions of that prodigious flop is still conspicuous across the industry today, and it is a real shame. Prior to Cimino's ambitious and consequential film, filmmakers in large to moderate funded American projects were given a greater deal of - what I see as - artistic creativity. Producers were less invasive on set and studio interference was much more infrequent. Two of America's most prominent filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, have personally subscribed to this notion, saying they were given much more flexibility in their 70s projects as opposed to those they worked on a decade later. This is partially why Scorsese distanced himself away from large-scale projects in the 80s and worked on smaller pieces, whereas Coppola was working off the disastrous ramifications of One from the Heart. Woody Allen, too, was forced to reshape his focuses, as well as various other filmmakers.



It was Heaven's Gate that fundamentally changed the very management and political landscape of mainstream filmmaking in America. As many know, Cimino was a trusted director amongst the large studios, heading into Heaven's Gate after the immeasurably towering critical and financial success of The Deer Hunter. As a result, overall supervision, intrusion, and administration was limited as the studios were faithfully optimistic that Cimino would deliver yet another triumph. The film only made back under $4 million of its $44 million budget, placing United Artists into disarray and collapse, and causing complete disorder.



Ever since that catastrophic debacle, studios and producers shifted their 'method of work' and began overseeing and observing projects much more thoroughly, to the extent of violating the filmmakers' 'vision' and giving him/her much less flexibility and authority. I personally know somebody who works in Los Angeles and he says there is a unified consensus amongst writers, producers, and directors that Heaven's Gate fundamentally changed the industry. Studios from there on in, after witnessing the fragmentation of United Artists, were simple too fearful and paranoid that any project given a substantial project that was predominately controlled by the director was too much of a chance. It left many precarious.

There was an interesting essay written by a primitive film historian who examines the repercussions and sheer significance of the Heaven's Gate flopwith greater detail. He speaks about the constant battles filmmakers 'coincidentally' had with studios ever since the fiasco happened - David Lynch's Dune and Terry Gilliam's Brazil being two of them.



I often ponder about alternatives. That is, imagine Heaven's Gate was a success? Or it was never made in the first place? I have always agreed with the notion that mainstream films have first and foremost been about generating viewership and profit, but this is strictly about the role of the filmmaker, and how that discernibly changed after the flop of one motion picture. I use the term 'personal' lightly here, but I think - without a doubt - directors were less-trusted and the status of producers and studio interference were greatly enhanced - after the flop of Heaven's Gate. Therefore, in some respects, the film did mark an end to personal filmmaking in American cinema. Of course, we will always have independent film, and there have been numerous masterpieces since 1980 that have had considerable budgets and large-studio backings, but there is no doubt its flop changed something in the industry. Or at least had an extensive impact.

This slice of filmic history has always interested me. What do you people think? This was a quite write-up, so excuse any inconsistencies or contradictions.




The commercial failure of Cimino's Heaven's Gate certainly marked the end of an era, that really began in the last few years of the 1960s after the old Studio System, which is how the American film industry had run for decades, finished its collapse, and for the next dozen years or so, there did seem to be what could be called "personal" filmmaking in the mainstream, with big budgets financed by the studios. When the first "film school" generation got their chance to make movies, including but not limited to Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, and Spielberg, there was a sea change. For a time. Easy Rider, which cost practically nothing and returned astounding millions, is often cited as the moment when the Studios kind of held up their hands in surrender, abandoned what remained of the old structure and sensitibilty, and let the new guys play with the tool box for a while. There were many astounding successes that resulted, both critically and commercially. The "risk" that might have been too great for the mainstream to take on a filmmaker like Terrence Malick, Michael Cimino, or even an older maverick like Robert Altman just ten years before was now not only taken, but welcomed and encouraged.

But even before Heaven' Gate, handing multiple millions of dollars to these newer but suddenly proven directorial voices had bitten them on the hand. Nobody is infallible, especially when it comes to box office returns. Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, Billy Friedkin's Sorcerer, and Steven Spielberg's 1941 are three high-profle examples of very expensive films made by what were to that point filmmaker's with unblemished (if brief) records, that bombed before Cimino's infamous project.

Cimino's Heaven's Gate is infamous for many reasons. It ran wildly and historically over time and over budget, and the press started making stories about those aspects, before a single frame had been screened. This had happened before, as with 1963's Cleoptra, and has most certainly happened since, including Jim Cameron's Titanic. But Cleopatra was at least a hit, even if wasn't enough of a hit to initially recoup its costs, and of course Titanic went on to be at the time the highest grossing film ever. Heaven's Gate, on the other hand, made barely a blip at the box office, when it was finally released. Because Cimino's previous film, The Deer Hunter, which was only his second feature, had just won numerous Oscars, he was given probably the most director-friendly contract ever written, which really prevented the Studio, United Artists, from stopping or capping the production, or from having any say in the editing room. Cimino's first work print cut was reportedly over five hours long, which he cut down to three hours and forty minutes for the initial release. The massive financial failure of the movie is credited with killing United Artists, which had been established by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith in 1919. Heaven's Gate effectively bankrupted the studio, which was then bought and absorbed by MGM. And all of that is some of why Heaven's Gate is more infamous than other financial failures from that era, or from just about any era.

Steven Bach's excellent book Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate details all of this and more. There is a documentary version of the book, with maybe less detail but definitely more perspective, that you can find on YouTube in eight parts...




The fiasco of Heaven's Gate and the essential death of United Artists did not end personal filmmaking. It certainly stopped any director from ever getting a carte blanche contract like Cimino had enjoyed. But that likely would have been true even if, somehow, Heaven's Gate would have returned Titanic-like numbers. Cimino's failure, ego, and hubris you can say certainly gave studio heads and numbers men ammunition in subsequent fights with directors over final cuts and overages. But to imply that no director had ever clashed with a studio before, or that Terry Gilliam wouldn't have had the exact same fight with Universal over Brazil had Heaven's Gate never been made is silly.

Personal filmmaking didn't end, but if you want to point to the trend of a type of genre blockbusters in the 1980s and beyond being financed more easily and freely than what I think you are broadly defining as "personal filmmaking", you can point more obviously not to the failure of one historical epic in 1980, but the record-breaking successes of Jaws (1975) and especially Star Wars (1977). Heaven's Gate definitely effected the industry and is one of the ultimate cautionary tales for both the creative types and bean counters, but to extrapolate either specific cases afterward or larger general trends as one-to-one cause, you know, you're allowed and arguments can be made...but no, I don't agree with the headline premise that "Heaven's Gate marked the end of personal filmmaking."

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



Heaven's Gate may have ended large budget studio "personal" films, but personal films thrive in the indie market. I see lots of them but small film makers with their own vision and some creativity. I doubt that major studios and investors will fund big budget epics unless all the stars are in the right alignment, but my guess is that small indie flicks might be around longer than $200,000,000 epics that are so predictable.



I've had Heaven's Gate on my DVR for months, but I just haven't been able to muster the desire to watch it. I know it's important to movie history, but a four-hour Cimino movie sounds insufferable.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
As far as the topic goes, I don't have much to offer. About the movie, I posted:

[Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)




I was one of those people who actually saw Heaven's Gate in 1980 in its original version before UA pulled it, recut it and dumped it back on the market five months later. At 219 minutes, it certainly is a formidable film and one which you have to be prepared for. (Of course, any movie over three-and-a-half hours needs your dedication, especially at the theatre.) What got Heaven's Gate into trouble with most viewers (and critics) is that it started out with several long, mostly-impressive (in and of themselves) set pieces which didn't especially seem to connect to each other and further the plot. In other words, the most-difficult part of the film was the beginning. Of course, several foreign epics have been structured similarly and hailed as masterpieces, and although I won't namedrop them right now, most of them are Italian. Then, there is the other thing which caused Heaven's Gate to bomb, and that was that there was a backlash against Cimino for winning the Oscar Best Picture (The Deer Hunter) with what some wrong-headed people (including Jane Fonda) thought was a pro-war, right-wing flick.



Now, I went back in 1981 and rewatched the film, cut by 70 minutes, and it's true that it was faster-paced and that it seemed action-packed (most all of the action was rear-loaded originally), but it also seemed choppy because the set pieces which used to be 20 minutes were now five minutes long. It also eviscerated much of the character motivations, the acting, the thematic complexity, and left you wondering who some people were. Today, I rewatched the restored version, and although it's still something of a tough row to hoe, it's certainly the way to watch the film. For one thing, Vilmos Zsigmond's sepia-toned cinematography is both spectacular in the context of the film and in the way we see history often through old sepia photos of the West. The film is about the Johnson County Wars of Wyoming in 1892, and the scenery is impressive and makes you feel as if you were close to Heaven's Gate, but in this version, there's just as much hellfire as anything.



Heaven's Gate is a big flick, and it has a big cast. The central character is obviously the man played by Kris Kristofferson who sides with the European immigrant settlers against the Cattleman's Association and eventually the U.S. Army. He meets and falls in love with a wild Frenchwoman (Isabelle Huppert), but she also loves Christopher Walken who's actually on the wrong side of the situation. Sam Waterston plays a scumbag who's basically in charge of arranging the killing of the settlers, and John Hurt, who doesn't believe in what he stands for, is also on his side just because he's too ineffectual. The cast is full of many other names, including Jeff Bridges, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Mickey Rourke, Terry O'Quinn, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, Tom Noonan, and a few others. David Mansfield's elegaic musical score is a strong asset (he's the violinist in the movie every time you see one), and the sets and costumes are spectacular. Ultimately, Heaven's Gate comes across as some strange melding of 1900, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Soldier Blue. Some people will hate it, others will love it, and many will scratch their heads. But if you get through it to the end, it's obvious that it's trying to be about something important, and in more than one way, it succeeds.
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I've had Heaven's Gate on my DVR for months, but I just haven't been able to muster the desire to watch it. I know it's important to movie history, but a four-hour Cimino movie sounds insufferable.
It really just went on forever. The only reason I can think of to watch it would be as a film school assignment. It's been a while and I don't recall it as bad so much as just overblown with too much dead air.